


The Dark Ones

by The_Marauders_Daughter



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Death, Depression, Gen, Graphic Description, Suicide Attempt, dark!Darcy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-03 09:56:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Marauders_Daughter/pseuds/The_Marauders_Daughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were a lot of things people knew about Darcy. She was fun and vibrant, she had no mental filter and didn't sugar-coat the truth... for the most part, people could say that they knew Darcy Lewis.<br/>Except, they really didn't. There was another side to Darcy, a side she never let anyone see. She kept it far away from even herself, knowing what would happen if it ever got loose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Maggia, Apririn and the iPod

**Author's Note:**

> I know I haven't written anything in a while, and I do have plans, especially with amnesia!Darcy, but I had to get this out of my head first. 
> 
> Darcy's OOC, although I do think this could be plausible.
> 
> Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, read this if you have issues with suicide attempts. 
> 
> This is not a pretty account.
> 
> This is dark.
> 
> You've been warned.

  

 

**AN: Really, I don't want anyone to attempt anything in this story. I know the Internet can get out of hand and that this is the story of a lot of people, including me. Please, don't try anything. TMD***

 

 

 

 

_"I know that I'm hardly the first person that this has happened to, but it still feels like a swift kick to the gut."_

 

 

 There were a lot of things people knew about Darcy. She was fun and vibrant, she had no mental filter and didn't sugar-coat the truth. She knew exactly how she felt about you: if she liked you, she let you know; if she didn't, she had no problem telling you where to go. She wore bright red lipstick and jammed out to music and she wasn't afraid of very much. The team had seen her jump to the defense of others, tackling the bad guys without so much as a scream, and everyone knew to stay away from the business end of her taser. For the most part, people could say that they knew Darcy Lewis.

Except, they really didn't. There was another side to Darcy, a side she never let anyone see. She kept it far away from even herself, knowing what would happen if it ever got loose.

Darcy could pinpoint the exact moment it started. She remembered, growing up, being truly happy, that happy where you had no problems to keep you up at night or to gnaw on your insides. She remembered that the last time she had been truly happy, she was beginning her junior year of high school.

Of course the first thing someone would point out would be that the realization that not everything is unicorn shit and pink sparkles was a part of growing up. Yeah, Darcy took Intro to Psych, she knew about the whole changing mind frame and world-awareness and all that jazz. But she knew, deep down, that it was a serious change.

It's not that Darcy was crazy; she knew exactly what was wrong with her, even if she never had a therapist officially tell her she had depression. It wasn't so serious; she could get out in the world and fight with superheroes and not curl up in the closet the way she wanted. Most mornings, it was actually really easy to slip on her mask and get on with life.

Yeah, she knew that the voices in her head existed solely in her head; thanks to a human need to define everything she had called them the "Dark Ones." The voices told her horrible truths, always managing to peek their heads over whatever barrier she'd built around them.

The Dark Ones knew every single one of her flaws, of her problems, of the doubts that lingered in every part of her mind, and gleefully took them all for a spin.

Still, Darcy was pretty good at keeping the Dark Ones at bay. She would control her breathing to prevent a panic attack and biting her tongue was amazingly effective to keep tears from forming.

She was doing great.

She hadn't had a relapse in a long while.

Of course, that meant that it would be a perfect time to have one now.

 

*

 

 Darcy stepped up as her name was called and the TA handed her paper back. She sat down and felt the pit of her stomach fall to the floor. After two grades—one barely passing and the other scraping the very bottom of the barrel—she needed a miracle to balance out her average. Slowly, she flipped over the paper. A tiny black 32 stared back at her. Darcy took a single breath and calmly placed the paper at the back of her notebook. The class started and ended in a blur of color as the professor lectured over the final exam coming up in two weeks.

She packed up the second class was over and headed straight to the advising office. Twenty agonizing minutes later, the advisor told Darcy exactly what she knew.

"I'm sorry, but you will have to retake the course."

That wouldn't have been too much of a problem, except that it was Darcy's second time taking the class. Dropping it wasn't going to help her any; her F from the first time was still in her GPA and a second one was useless. She was already a semester behind her planned graduation date because of the alien worm that put her in a coma for three months. The school allowed her to take the finals she missed that semester, but the tests weren’t easy when she had missed half the classes!

Her undergrad loans were already swallowing her in debt, not the mention the payments she was making to attend graduate school. There was no way she could afford another semester of classes.

So Darcy smiled easily at the advisor, thanked her for her time, and left the office.

Her state of numb got her as far as the subway. She took a seat in the nearly empty car and started crying.

 

*

 

They liked to start with her brain; her self-esteem was always in the toilet. Why shouldn't it? So were her grades.

How could she not possibly understand something as straightforward as American Political Thought? And then to fail it? _Twice?_ Sure, maybe if it were something harder like _international_ poli-sci. But it wasn't, was it? And it's not like she could actually learn something that complex. After all, the only reason she had even gotten this far was because of those low cut blouses she'd worn in front of her professors.

On that tangent, the Dark Ones liked to move on to her body: boobs? Yeah, what right did she have to complain about the pain they caused her at times? She was downright tiny compared to other, worthier counterparts. She had no place to stand, either, because she had enjoyed all the attention the girls had gotten her, hadn't she?

Of course, that was about the end of possibly-positive features for her. Her hair was hardly anything to rave around, and the mirror _was_ right, she was fat. Look at all the opportunities she'd had to fix herself over the years, most remarkably now that she was a paper-pusher for SHIELD. But no, she had to gorge herself on horrible junk food that just made everything worse.

She had absolutely no right to feel bad. The Dark Ones were just telling her the truth. So what if she worked and went to school? That was nothing special: others had worked full time, paying their way through school while raising families on the side. She was living in New York, an opportunity millions would kill to have and she couldn't even be grateful for the tiny, rat-infested apartment she lived in. It was more than she deserved.

Did it matter in the long run that she could hardly afford to feed herself? She was richer that 90-something percent of the world, and her one-meal-a-day was better than anything they had. She had electricity, education, a real job... Worthless waste of space couldn't even appreciate that.

Those were the Dark Ones' favorite words to use for her:

_Worthless._

_Pathetic._

_Weak._

_Useless._

_Pointless._

_Waste of space._

_Better off dead._

And sometimes the Dark Ones won and Darcy would curl up in her closet, lights off and door shut, and smother her cries under her blankets. She would throw back her head and scream silent sobs that wracked her frame. Her fingers would twist savagely in her hair and pull and the pain would be a kind reminder of how weak and stupid and worthless she was. And she would cry until her throat was raw and her eyes and her mouth and her face just hurt from the torture she put them through, because Darcy knew that nothing would ever be enough.

As a final reminder, the Dark Ones would extend a long arm, gently pat her on the head and remind her that she was even more of a disgrace that she thought.

At least others with depression had a reason to be down; she had never been abused as a child; she'd never been raped, or beaten, or hurt in any way. She’d grown up with a family that loved her. What reason did she have to be so sad, such worthless waste of human?

 

*

 

The subway gave Darcy enough time to compose herself as she pulled into work. There was little that disturbed the other passengers about the girl with the panic attack, and their apathy helped Darcy push the Dark Ones a little further away.

She changed into her office wear, managing to roll her eyes at the lewd drawing someone had taped to the inside of her locker. She carefully slid her mask on and entered her tiny cubicle.

Darcy had only managed to work through two mission reports before she felt a presence behind her. "What do you want, Willis?"

Without needing to turn around Darcy could already see the smirk covering her workmate's face. "Really, Lewis? Not even a 'how are you, Willis? How was your weekend?'"

"I know better than to ask questions that I don't want to know the answers to." She rolled her eyes and faced the other agent. He was harmless, but his grating propensity to hit on her was pushing her limits already. "Let me guess, you sat in front of your computer all weekend, beer in one hand, sorry excuse for a dick in the other?"

"Have you been looking through my windows, Lewis?" His smirk grew wider. "Don't be jealous, all of my thoughts were of you."

"I'm flattered," she deadpanned. "Now stop harassing me or I'll report you to Hill. Again."

Willis put his hands up in surrender. "Chill out, Lewis. I actually came by to tell you that Grube wants to see you."

"Whoop-de-doo." She quickly saved and locked her files away; even in a secret agency, you didn't leave files like that lying around. "Did the principal say why he was calling me in?"

He shrugged and fell in step with Darcy as they walked towards the supervisory offices. "He just said he needed to talk to you."

Grube was Darcy's supervisor, her immediate superior, and he took no small pleasure in reminding her of the fact every chance he got. Darcy suspected he had mommy-issues and Darcy was the unwilling doppelganger he took his past out on. That or he just really didn't like her.

They stopped outside the office. For all his flaws, Willis wasn't a bad man and he frowned at the locked door. "Good luck, Darcy."

She gave him a small smile. "Thanks." Then she steeled her shoulders and stepped in. "You asked to see me, sir?"

Darcy closed the door behind her and froze when she saw that they weren't alone. Behind the desk was Grube, fingers interlaced and glaring as normal. What surprised her was the figure sitting in front of the desk. "Agent Sitwell?"

Sitwell nodded and motioned to the last chair. She sat. Sitwell had replaced Coulson after he died (and Darcy wasn't supposed to know that he was still alive, but Jane had heard from Thor...) It was rare to see Sitwell anywhere near the record-keeping department; his clearance was six, and Grube himself barely merited a three. She could already feel her palms begin to sweat.

The bald man wasted no time getting to the point. "Agent Lewis, we have a problem."

The Dark Ones raised their heads at the words and Darcy swallowed hard, pushing them away.

"Sir?"

Grube sneered at her. "You screwed up, Lewis."

Sitwell threw Grube a look. "This is only an investigation, Agent Grube." He turned back to Darcy. "What do you know about the Maggia?"

"Organized crime syndicate," she parroted immediately. "Specialize in evil geniuses. There was some trouble seven months ago with a certain Justin Hammer financing their latest mission, but the Avengers put a stop to that one."

"Agent Lewis," Sitwell asked, "what do you do here?"

She blinked. "I'm a cataloguer. Whatever mission reports come in, we classify the information into categories so that whenever there's a search, it'll turn up."

"The problem is exactly that," Sitwell said.

"Lewis, we can't find the Maggia reports." A twitch pulled the corner of Grube's mouth into an ugly smile.

Darcy frowned. "I don't understand."

"We tried to access the information on that file, but we can't find it in the system."

"I don't--" she shook her head. "Sir, I follow protocol for all of my reports. Summarization of the mission, classification, categorization, drafting a classified report for official governmental copies, and then dropping it off for storage." She looked from one man to the other. "That information should not be missing."

She sat in the office for a long time as Grube berated her for misplacing the report, going so far as to hint that she'd stolen the information before Sitwell stepped in.

"Agent Lewis, we need to find the file."

"I told you," she forced through gritted teeth, "I followed protocol. The file must have been misplaced upstream. Look through storage, or maybe Grube lost it."

Her supervisor stood up and pounded a fist on the desk. "LEWIS!"

"Stand down, Agent!" Sitwell yelled. When Grube was seated again, Sitwell spoke. "Until we can find the file, we need to follow protocol." He pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and cleared his throat. "Agent Lewis, you are hereby suspended indefinitely pending an Internal Affairs investigation."

"WHAT!"

Sitwell continued reading. "You will turn in your badge, weapon, and identification to Internal Affairs. Given the type of suspension, you will receive a half-pay salary. You will be contacted when and if your suspension is lifted. You can pick up a copy of the terms of your suspension in the IA office." He put down the paper and looked at her. "I'm sorry, Agent Lewis."

Darcy could feel the tears spring up behind her eyes and the Dark Ones tore their way free from their constraints. With the last of her control, she managed to slip her mask on again.

"Will that be all, sir?"

Sitwell looked a bit disconcerted. "Yes, Agent."

Darcy stood up and walked out the door. It shut slowly behind her and she fell back against the solid wood. Already, her throat was closing up and she could barely feel the air forcing its way into her lungs. Her heart was pounding through her chest and she felt the sour pit of her stomach threaten to puke all over the floor. She gripped her hair tightly in her hands, covering her ears, but she could still hear the voices inside.

"Best thing that's happened in my department in a long time," she heard Grube say. "You should have just fired her and be done with it."

"You are also a part of this investigation, Grube," Sitwell said coldly. "I did not appreciate the way you spoke to Agent Lewis."

"She's just a feather-brained airhead," he scoffed. "Bitch should do us all a favor and kill herself."

Before Sitwell could reply, Darcy wrenched the door open and stuck her head back in. "You know I can still hear you, right? I swear, if you say one more thing I am going to tase you in the balls."

She slammed the door shut and stomped back to her cubicle. She quickly cleared out her desk, filled a sad little box with her belongings and turned the reports over to Willis.

He took the folders with a frown. "Are you ok, Darcy?"

She shook her head and gave him a small smile. "Just don't let him do the same to you, Willis." And she left.

 

*

 

Darcy's stomach was grumbling by the time she made it home. She ignored it easily and walked straight into the closet. There, she let loose the Dark Ones and cried.

 

*

 

She lay in silence for a long time. The Dark Ones had run rampant, leaving just enough energy in her to strip and sit in the shower. The water had long since gone cold, but Darcy couldn't bring herself to turn it off. She really had to, considering her pay-cut.

_Half-pay._

She couldn't even afford to survive on her full pay. How was she going to make it through a month without money, if she barely managed enough to eat once a day?

The Dark Ones were gone, but they had left her a little tidbit to think over.

Darcy had thought about suicide before. Not anything serious, but more in a 'look, there's an idea.' Grube's words kept running through her head, though, and with one shaking hand she shut the water off.

The idea wasn't as unappealing as it seemed: there would be no more money troubles if she didn't need money anymore. Her loans would be gone, her bills.

Her stomach wouldn't try to eat itself anymore.

Most depressing of all, she had no one to miss her. Her parents would be better off without her and she was an only child. She hardly knew anyone in the city; she had no friends, not anymore.

That had been the factor that kept her from considering death too seriously, but objectively, there was no need. Darcy had slowly drifted apart from the team and Jane, the person that had brought her to the city in the first place. She never saw them because they were too busy living their own lives, fighting the bad guys and turning the world on its head. Jane lived with them, happy in her own little science bubble where Darcy didn't fit. She'd been the one to make the call for Darcy to stop being her assistant, to go focus on something she could actually do.

They had kept in contact for a while, Darcy calling to make sure she was taking care of herself. The calls had stretched further and farther in between, growing shorter and shorter until Jane simply answered the phone, said she was good, and hung up.

The rest of the team never seemed to notice she had left, even if she hadn’t lived in the Tower. The assassins and the Captain were always off on missions; Dr. Banner either traveled or locked himself in the labs with Jane and Erik. Tony Stark was his own man unto himself.

If she were perfectly honest with herself, the person that would miss her the most was Willis.

With that sobering thought, she dressed and crawled into bed.

 

*

By morning, she had decided on death.

The thought didn’t make her happy or giddy. It actually gave her a sour stomach and she dry heaved acid into the toilet, but at least it gave her something to do. There was no point going to classes anymore, so she used the time to pack up her things. The Dark Ones hung back as she worked; they only spoke up to point out how to make her less of a burden even in death.

Darcy had very few belongings, so she decided to box up what she could and dropped them off at Salvation Army. She called her landlord and told him she was leaving once the month was up. He would have no idea it wouldn’t be a typical moving out, but the bastard just stared at her chest, so she didn’t feel bad at all.

The only thing left was the actual act itself. Darcy had thought about how she would die before, but she had never actually planned it out. With a numb detachment, she flipped through the ideas.

She couldn’t go by car crash; first off, there was no car to drive, and second, she could accidentally kill someone else too.

Dying heroically wouldn’t work, and she couldn’t stomach the idea of suicide by cop, even if there was something she could do that could get guns pointed at her.

Hanging was iffy.

Poison was slow.

She couldn’t afford to buy a gun.

So she decided the knife was the way to go.

The Dark Ones whispered at her as she cut off her gas, her water, her power. _Pathetic, useless waste of space. At least do something worthwhile before you finally do the world a favor and kill yourself._

So she did. Darcy spent the last of her money on an enormous, delicious lunch and walked to the Red Cross. She gave them as much blood as they were authorized to take and stopped off at a hair salon. Snips later, she had a pixie cut and the salon had her hair, ready for Locks of Love.

It seemed appropriate to wait until nightfall to do it. Darcy spent the time waiting and popping aspirin after aspirin. She remembered that it was a blood thinner, and after her donation it seemed like the best way to go around it.

Darcy didn’t want to write a suicide note, so instead she wrote a list of instructions. She asked that they (whoever _they_ turned out to be) do with her body what they could; they could use her skin, couldn’t they? Her eyes? She asked they send her textbooks to the campus and see if they were useful to anyone. And lastly, she asked that they please bury her—or cremate her, whatever—with her iPod.

It seemed fitting, strangely enough.

So she plugged her iPod in one last time and let the speakers drown out the sound of the water running in the bathtub. She stripped to her underwear and picked up the blade resting by the sink.

And Darcy placed the tip at her wrist and pulled.

It took more effort than she thought. The skin was hard to break and it hurt, a lot, regardless of all the aspirin she’d taken. She had to make several cuts, over her wrists and the inside of her elbow, before the blood flowed easily out of her.

It was pretty, she mused. Already, she was numb. The bathroom lights dimmed in her vision and she lay down inside the tub. The color of the blood was nice, even if the harsh metallic smell wasn’t. She let the hot water flow over her arms and wash the blood away. Her planning seemed to have worked, because the wounds wouldn't close. Her head started to hurt and she started feeling sleepy.

At least this was something she wouldn’t fail at.

Darcy allowed herself a small smile at the thought. The Dark Ones went silent again.

And she let the fog carry her out to the faint music in the background.

Finally.


	2. Interlude: Pounding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teaser chapter

Being dead hurt. It felt like she couldn't breathe and her heart pounded too fast.

Pounded.

_How could a dead heart beat?_

And her eyes opened and she saw a blur of colors whirling around her head.

It really didn't help, so she shut her eyes again.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do have chapter 3; I just need to type it up.


	3. Numb, Sleep, Death and Phil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Sorry this took forever, but I'm finally back on campus with a computer and internet access! This is the last chapter, and thanks for everyone that still reads this fic. It isn't perfect, but here it is.

 

 

 

She wasn’t dead. That much was certain, unfortunately. Darcy couldn’t be exactly sure, but Hell probably didn’t smell like hospital antiseptic. Heaven didn’t either, unless either God or the Devil had a perverse sense of humor, so she decided that she was still among the living.

Damn.

Darcy’s eyes refused to open and let her see, so the rest of her senses did the job. She was definitely in a hospital, judging by the scratchy sheets under her fingers and the medical jargon that flowed around her. Her heart beat dully in the background, a metronome that mocked her with every electronic ‘beep.’

_Fail._

_Fail._

_Failed._

_You failed._

She couldn’t shut it off, since her body refused to move along with her eyes. So she let the black behind her eyes haze over everything else and let her unconscious take over for a while, away from the smell and away from her traitorous, mocking heart.

 

*

 

A small stream of sound roused Darcy from the darkness and she couldn’t find it in her to fight Sleep.

“...anyway, Johnson still owes me for the pizza he got when the Knights played on Saturday...”

The voice sounded familiar. Darcy couldn’t quite place it, but the voice didn’t seem bothered by her lack of response.

“...I don’t think that haircut suits you, to be honest. Maybe you should have shaved your entire head.”

Now Darcy really didn’t know what was going on. Sleep seemed to notice her again, though, and the voice died out.

 

*

 

Darcy was confused. One moment, she was completely out to the world, and the next the voice from before woke her up.

She just wanted to be dead. Was that so hard to ask?

The voice didn’t seem to care about making her dead, though.

“...so I tried to call you, see if you wanted to grab a bite to eat, but your phone went straight to voicemail. Johnson told me not to worry, cuz, you know, he knew everything already, nosy bastard. He said to give you space, or some shit like that.”

The voice grew softer and a little harder to understand.

“...Sitwell came down, said that he needed you to sign some paperwork for IA, so I offered to bring it by. I got your address from HR. You’ve been looking kind of sick lately…”

Darcy wasn’t certain if it was the voice, or maybe it was her, but it sounded like whatever it was went underwater.

“...landlord’s a dick...”

“...steam everywhere...”

“...stupid... iPod... everywhere...”

“...CPR...”

And then the voice was shouting. “I thought we were friends! Why the _hell_ didn’t you say anything?! I found your lifeless _body_ , you selfish bitch! Your body! You were _DEAD!”_

Dead sounded nice.

Dead sounded really nice.

Darcy didn’t know why the voice was so angry, but Sleep seemed more than happy to take her away again.

 

*

 

The voice sounded sad the next time it visited Darcy.

“You need to wake up. I keep trying to find your family, or even an emergency contact, but apparently you left that part of the HR paperwork blank. I can’t believe we work for a multi-million dollar secret spy organization, financed by Tony Stark himself, and we can’t figure out who to call. Where the _hell_ is your cell phone, Darcy?”

 

*

 

Resigned. The voice was resigned as it talked to Darcy.

“Can you believe it? Grube had it all along, that cock-sucking son of a whore. And then he tried to frame you for it. Hey, guess where they found the papers. Yeah, in his locker. Of all the stupid places for that asshole to hide it, he stuck it in his fucking locker.”

There was silence for a while, and Darcy almost went back to Sleep.

“We think he was trying to frame you.”

More silence.

“Sitwell’s sorry, you know. I don’t think he really ever thought you did it. I think he was just trying so hard to replace Coulson that everything kinda, you know? Apparently they’d suspected Grube of being a mole or something, but at least they caught him before he actually sold any information over.”

Darcy still had no idea what he was talking about, but she couldn’t really bring herself to care.

“You still didn’t have to try to kill yourself.”

She felt… numb.

Numb was a nice word.

_Numb, numb, numb._

 Mentally, emotionally numb.

 

*

 

Sleep was good. It wasn’t Death, but pretty close to it, since Death seemed to have forsaken Darcy. At least the Dark Ones weren’t around. Not that Darcy thought she’d care that much.

Numb, right?

Numb was nice.

 

*

Voices had a horrible sense of time, and no sooner had Sleep wrapped her in his arms of infinite night than a new voice joined the first.

"Be careful."

“Darcy?”

This second voice was familiar too, but Darcy didn’t remember who it was.

“Darcy?” Something touched her leg, then her hand, and the new voice erupted in tears. _"Darcy!"_

 

*

 

Sleep wasn't a fickle lover, and he let the voices have Darcy some time later.

However, they weren't talking to her.

"It's all my fault," the second voice said. It was higher than the first voice. It belonged to a woman. "It was all my fault."

The first voice, the man's voice, said nothing.

"She always called me, checking to see if I was ok, just checking in, but I always blew her off." There was a sob. "I just cared about my work! I never asked about her! I-I-I never knew."

"Do you know why she might have—”

"Quit interrogating me!"

"I just want to know what happened to her!" The man shouted. "I want to know why she tried to kill herself!"

The woman kept crying.

 

*

 

"I found a classmate's number in her phone. She said Darcy was having trouble paying for school."

The voices were soft.

"I don't doubt it," the man said. "There wasn't anything in her apartment. There—" the man gasped a breath. "There was a note, saying to take her stuff, use what we could. Her... Her textbooks. Her body, as an organ donor."

"What?!"

"... She cut her hair. I-I-I saw her with normal hair, and then this."

 

*

 

"She looks so sick."

"I don't understand," the woman said. "She, she doesn't have cancer, does she?"

"No, no, no... It’s...  The doctor said it's malnutrition."

"Mal—what?"

"...her fridge was empty."

"Oh my god."

 

*

 

Darcy didn't want to wake up. The voices came and went, and Darcy only noted them as the passing of time. Occasionally her arms would itch, or burn, but then it would go away.

Sleep was nice, but he wasn't as permanent as Death. He gave her up and waited to take her back, forcing her to open her eyes.

It was bright, and Darcy shut her eyes against the light streaming in through the windows. There was a loud sound, and then it was dark.

"Darcy?"

It was the man's voice, and it belonged to Willis. Darcy looked at him with a detached sort of curiosity.

"Darcy, you're awake!"

Willis reached out as if to touch her, but he drew his hand back. Darcy followed his line of sight until they rested on the thick binds on her wrists. She couldn't see her feet, but she bet there were ties around her ankles as well.

"You're on suicide watch," Willis said bluntly. "Darcy... Why? You, of all people, why?"

 Darcy looked at one wrist, then at another. Long, delicate bandages wrapped all the way from her knuckles to her biceps. She lay back down on her pillow.

 "Darcy?"

 Yeah, still numb.

 

*

 

She wondered if she was crazy. She didn't think so, but sane people didn't want to kill themselves, did they?

The hospital seemed to think so, so Darcy was shut up in the loony wing. It was quiet and boring and white, and if Darcy didn't already feel crazy she would've been driven insane.

There was a man at the hospital that visited her a couple of times. Hospital therapist, he said, and all he did was talk about how her suicide attempt wasn't her fault, that depression was common, that she had friends that cared...

The heart monitor started up again, but it changed its words.

_Lies._

_Lies._

_All lies, you lie._

It was all Darcy’s fault. Depression, she knew intimately. And no, she had no friends.

All alone.

When her throat started working again, Darcy screwed up by asking why they bothered with reviving her. The therapist guy called the doctor and they put something in her IV bag that made her head all fuzzy. It wouldn’t let her return to Sleep, but rather kept her in a strange sort of limbo.

She missed Sleep.

She wanted Death.

They just didn’t get it.

 

*

 

They took her off the antidepressants or whatever the hell they they gave her on long enough to receive visitors.

“It may not do much good,” the nurse said callously as she led three people in. “She doesn’t say much.”

Jane—and Darcy recognized that she was the owner of the female voice she’d heard—gave the nurse a dirty look, but Darcy didn’t mind. She really didn’t want to talk.

Once the woman was gone, Jane fell into the chair next to Darcy’s bed. “Darcy, what the hell did you do?”

Darcy turned her head away.

“No, don’t think that you’re getting off so easy,” Jane growled, forcing Darcy’s head back to face her. “Talk. I want to know what the hell is the matter with you.”

Darcy knew there was no way she was going to get to Sleep unless Jane left her alone. “What do you care?”

Jane sat back as if Darcy had slapped her. “D-Darcy? Darcy, I’m your friend!”

Where 'before-Darcy' might have scoffed or made some sarcastic comment, 'now-Darcy' didn’t really care. She was still numb.

The indifference made Jane start to cry.

Willis stepped up between Jane and Darcy. “Jane, why don’t you get some coffee?” After Jane left, he took her chair.

“I just want to know why.”

“And why do _you_ care?”

His nostrils flared and he took a deep breath. “You’re my friend. Friends are supposed to keep an eye on each other and _not try to kill themselves!”_

Darcy craned her neck as she looked at Willis. “What makes you think we’re friends?” she asked clinically.

Willis took another deep breath and looked over his shoulder to the person behind him. Coulson stepped out of the corner and Darcy blinked.

“You’re not dead.”

“You already knew that, Agent Lewis” he said with the same level of detachment she did.

Darcy did. She expected Coulson to say more, but he just stood there. After a long, long time, he pulled a small syringe out of his pocket. He reached over and injected it into her IV bag. A warm feeling washed over Darcy and Willis’ “what did you do?” was all she heard before Sleep met her again.

 

*

 

The next time Darcy woke up, she was free. Her arms and legs weren’t tied down and she managed to move the bed into a sitting position. Coulson was sitting next to her, alone.

The numb was still there, but it felt faint.

“You put something in my IV bag.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“You looked like you needed some sleep.” He gave her a strange sort of half-grin.

“Would you kill me?”

“Why would I kill you?” he asked, smirk gone.

“Because I want to die and you’re good at killing people.”

“Only when I need to,” he said. “Agent Lewis, why did you want to die?”

The Dark Ones were gone, but their words flowed easily through her mouth. “ _Miss_ Lewis; I got fired, sort of. I’m fired and I’m a coward. I don’t want to fight anymore.” She frowned and looked at her IV. “What did you give me?”

“ _Agent_ Lewis; it’s a tranquilizer laced with a mild experimental truth-telling serum.”

“It’s not experimental,” she said. “What do you want, Phil?”

“Tell me why. Agent..”

The remaining numb kept her matter-of-fact. “Because I can’t do this anymore. I’m not ok, and I can’t pretend that things are ok. People expect me to be happy and perky and cool and I can’t lie anymore.” The words pushed through her lips and she distantly wondered if there was any use fighting it.

Not against Coulson. She sighed.

“What do you mean by lie, Agent Lewis?”

“I’ve been depressed for a really long time. I just don’t want to put up with things anymore. I live in a tiny box of an apartment and I have to sleep with the bookcase in front of the door. Grad school is horrible, since I haven’t graduated yet and then I failed a class for the second time in a row. They keep calling me and sending me bills for my undergrad, and I can’t pay for them because I need to pay grad school, and SHIELD pay is shit. I work all the hours I can, but I really don’t like it because everyone keeps on leering at me. The guys send me really bad drawings and leave me sexual notes, since I’m one of three women on the whole floor. I'm always hungry; I haven’t eaten a proper meal since they started making us pay for food three months ago, and no one really cares.”

“And your family?”

“They’re mad that I haven’t graduated. They’re better off without me, really."

“And your friends?”

“I call Jane, but she doesn’t really care, I know. She kicked me out of her lab, remember? Oh, never mind, I don’t think you knew, being not really dead and all.”

“What about your other friends? Agent Willis? Your boyfriend?”

“I don’t have any,” she said dispassionately. “No one wants to be friends with me, or date me; I think it’s because I’m ugly, but that’s ok, I guess. I’m always at work or I’m at school or I’m asleep. Sleep is nice; he’d not like Death, but he tries.”

She trailed off and Coulson tried to bring her back. “And Agent Willis?”

“Willis just sees me as a pair of boobs. He hits on me. He’s an asshole, really, but not a bad guy like Grube. Grube’s a dick; he wanted to fire me, and then Sitwell cut my pay, so I can’t even eat once a day anymore.” She shrugged. “Death sounded nice. How what it being dead?"

“Kind of boring, really.” Coulson took hold of her hand. He ran his fingers up and down her bandages. “Why this way?”

She looked down too. “It was easier. Other ways were too complicated. I took aspirin."

“That explains a lot,” he said slowly. “The doctors had a hard time stopping the bleeding."

“Why did you bring me back, Phil?” she asked softly. “No one cares, not really.”

“Agent Lewis.” He let go of her arm and cupped her face in his hands. “ _Darcy_. You will always have people that care.”

 

*

 

Coulson seemed serious about having people care. Darcy didn’t really believe him, even when he got the entire team out to her room.

“Go away,” she said. “I’m not important. Go back to whatever you were doing.”

She ignored them as a whole, so they saw her one by one.

Clint and Natasha came together. Natasha sat in the chair and Clint sat on her bed, and neither talked, for which Darcy was grateful. Their presence was nice, and a hell of a lot better than Thor’s.

Jane never came with Thor, which was good. The big guy had been away on other-worldly business for a while, but that didn’t seem to matter to him. As it was, he stormed around the room making thunder and demanding explanations and threatening her school and SHIELD until the hospital finally banned him from visiting Darcy.

Tony came by once. He wasn’t his usual arrogant self and stayed a grand total of three whole minutes before fleeing her room. Coulson delivered a present from him later: her battered iPod with a new arc-reactor battery. “It’s his way of making amends,” he explained.

The most powerful influences at chipping away the numb were the most surprising.

“I tried to kill myself before,” Bruce said without preamble when his turn came around. “Several times, in fact.”

“But you can’t die,” Darcy said.

“Not yet,” he said breezily. “Didn’t stop me from trying. I still think about it, now and again.”

“I don’t have a problem trying to fight the urge, doc. I really don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Because you’re useless? You’re better off dead because you won’t be a burden to anyone that way? People would be happier if you were gone, because then they wouldn’t have to worry about you or deal with you or put up with you anymore?”

He kind of shocked her with that statement, and his talked about his own history—abused as a kid, being alone growing up, having only science to turn to. He was suicidal even before the Other Guy 

Bruce was great at keeping her miserable company, but he wasn’t as adept about vocalizing the fight to keep ahead. That’s where Steve came in.

It was strange that no one had ever thought about how Steve had adapted to the future. “I guess no one thinks about Captain America having dark thoughts,” he chuckled mirthlessly. “My best friend was gone. I went against the devil to avenge his death and suddenly everyone I knew was dead. I finally had a date with a woman that actually cared about me, and she’s suddenly 97 years old. I didn’t know anything about this time and all these people expected me to just pick up my shield and carry on the way I had before. I didn’t have friends either, just a team that hated my guts and thought I was better off somewhere else or dead.”

He talked about trying to help where he could, about just putting one foot in front of the other. He understood what she meant by giving all she could of herself before dying: “I grew up during the Depression, remember? It was the only way out for a lot of people.” He didn’t preach like the shrink did and Darcy liked him better for that.

The thoughts and talks and presence of people penetrated little by little, trickling through the cracks in the numb shield around Darcy.

It wasn’t completely gone. Darcy had spent five days in mixed consciousness and three weeks in the psych ward. Even after her wounds had healed and Darcy was released from the hospital, the numbness hung around. It was weaker and it went away a little at times, but it was still present. The Dark Ones visited, but they couldn’t penetrate the numb, so there was that, at least. The dark scars on her arms served as a reminder for when the numb failed.

It was a hard fight. Darcy struggled to overcome her own indifference, and sometimes the numb hurt more than it helped.

Her first panic attack nearly sent her into another closet, again with the intention to off herself, but Jane caught her in time and held her until the attack passed. It was hard to tell whom the attack hit the hardest: Darcy or Jane.

The primary task was getting Darcy to physically healthy again; the team moved her into the Tower and her apartment building was demolished. They fed her, but her stomach was so unused to food that she threw up the entire first week. After she was able to keep two small meals down, her schooling followed.

Without her consent, the team told her university about her suicide attempt; they gave her an indefinite extension on her classes, including the Political Theory one.

They said they did the same with her loans, until someone accidentally let it slip six months later that Tony had actually paid them all out. It took a long time, but she forgave him after giving him the reaming of his life.

He took it all in stride. "You're welcome, Lewis," he smirked. "That's the first real emotion you've shown yet."

Angry worked well, and Darcy used it back at SHIELD. It wasn't public knowledge that Coulson was alive, but it was worth the secret to see Sitwell and Grube's reactions. She walked into Grube's jail cell, Coulson at her side, and punched Grube full in the face. Grube was only lucky Phil still had Darcy's tazer, even after being out of the hospital for months.

Her friends turned out to be real friends, in the end. They stood by her for the years that followed, there to talk or fight or even to sit in silence and cry. Bruce and Steve were her rocks, and she used every bit of their help to keep pushing forward.

She slipped and she faltered and she often fell, but everyone helped her stand back up (even Willis, who turned out to be pretty cool in the end).

She asked Coulson once why he fought for her, when even Death didn't care. He told her a story like hers, but with a different protagonist: his mother. Her ending wasn't a happy one, and "I'll be damned if that happens again on my watch."

Darcy got better, but for as long as she lived, she was never able to say that she got over her depression. The numb always stayed, a familiar companion. The suicidal thoughts eventually faded away, except for a few times the Dark Ones tried to pull her away. With her support team, Darcy kept them at bay.

Death was still seductive, but not in the same way and Darcy used it to her advantage. A full year after her incident, her Masters ended up being Psychology rather than Politics and Darcy set up shop as a counselor on the same campus. Her specialty was depression and suicide risk, and whenever anyone told her 'you have no idea how I feel,' she simply raised the arm of her sleeve.

"Just try me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, whatcha think? Comments? Concerns? Rotten tomatoes?
> 
> Selfish-self promotion: check out my 'Swiss Cheese' story, it'll be updated by the weekend, I promise!  
> -TMD

**Author's Note:**

> So...?


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